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Please help me find a poem!!!

92 replies

SadUselessMum · 30/09/2024 21:08

My 13 year old daughter wants to read a poem out at school as part of National Poetry Day. This is unheard of as she is normally very shy and would never volunteer for anything!!

So we are very pleased! However…..she has no idea of a poem to read and it’s in 2 days!

She says she wants a funny one but nothing embarrassing. She goes to quite a sensible, mature school so it would need to not be a silly, young one.

Has anyone got any ideas? English is not my first language so poems are a bit of a mystery to me. Any help would be gratefully received!

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7
Elsvieta · 05/10/2024 20:19

Betjeman?

WitcheryDivine · 05/10/2024 10:19

What did she go for in the end @SadUselessMum ?

veritasverity · 01/10/2024 15:11

Pam Ayre's
'I wish I looked after me teeth'
Would fit all your DD's requirements!
Easy to read, great rhyming, fun without being silly, and has a good moral to the story!

TubeScreamer · 01/10/2024 13:51

Brian Bilston would fit the bill.

Gymrabbit · 01/10/2024 11:38

Purplebunnie

no worries! It is pretty filthy but I’m sure some teachers do teach it literally.

User14March · 01/10/2024 10:56

John Betjeman - a few might work.

Purplebunnie · 01/10/2024 10:40

Gymrabbit · 01/10/2024 08:50

And whoever suggested Goblin Market clearly knows nothing at all about it.
it’s really not appropriate for a 13 year old to be reading out a poem about virgins sucking off goblins. (And it’s about 10 pages long)

What!!!! We never discussed that part when we did it at school!! Many apologies OP

It was put to us as a warning against temptation but there was no mention of sex (1970's interpretation). I wasn't suggesting she recited all of it just the first part

Useyourfork · 01/10/2024 10:16

I love the positive messaging behind this poem, written by a teenager.

Please help me find a poem!!!
Please help me find a poem!!!
Gymrabbit · 01/10/2024 08:50

And whoever suggested Goblin Market clearly knows nothing at all about it.
it’s really not appropriate for a 13 year old to be reading out a poem about virgins sucking off goblins. (And it’s about 10 pages long)

Gymrabbit · 01/10/2024 08:49

*Fescue *

this isn’t a debating competition though is it? And the child in question is supposed to be sharing a little poem with her class not boring them to death with an epic.🙄

Fescue · 01/10/2024 07:23

HollyGolightly4 · 30/09/2024 21:58

I'm an English teacher, I think a lot of these are too long and not quite right for high school. I think I'd go for one that could be on the curriculum - Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy? Kid by Simon Armitage? It's also black history month- I come from by Dean Atta is gorgeous

Too long?

I take it they no longer do debating in schools anymore?

CurlewKate · 01/10/2024 07:20

Have a look at Mary Oliver. Wild Geese is wonderful and maybe less common than some other choices. It flows beautifully too- good for reciting. I'd steer her away from funny- it's really hard and it's easy to be thrown off track if people laugh-and if they don't!

WartOrNot · 01/10/2024 06:54

there was also another child who did the poem about two raindrops racing down the window pane - sorry can't remember the name but it was good

Waiting at the Window, by A A Milne. A sweet poem, not too long.

A A Milne's poems are worth looking at, as are Hilaire Belloc's. I think I could probably still recite the whole of Matilda, Who Told Lies and Was Burnt to Death, nearly 50 years after I learned it for a poetry competition!

SadUselessMum · 01/10/2024 01:09

So many amazing poems! I have had a fantastic two hours reading them all. Thank you so much! I have printed about 10 out for her to have a look at tomorrow. So thankful to everyone!

OP posts:
neilyoungismyhero · 01/10/2024 00:03

Inhaledfoodohno · 30/09/2024 21:32

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse (she'll need balls of steel to read that at school)

She cannot possibly read that, she is shy and sounds like it would be inappropriate for her school, well any school come to that. I'm guessing your suggestion is a joke!
It's my favourite poem.

AmadeustheAlpaca · 30/09/2024 23:53

I'm fond of "Upon the Hearth the Fire is Red" by Tolkien, it's not too long and I like the ideas in it of travelling and seeing the world but enjoying going home to your own bed.
Good luck OP with finding a poem for your daughter, some good suggestions.

LunaNorth · 30/09/2024 23:43

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy
Medusa by Carol Ann Duffy
The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
To Autumn by John Keats
Hope is the Thing with Feathers - Emily Dickinson

A range of lengths and themes there, OP!

Sgtmajormummy · 30/09/2024 23:37

The Cremation of Sam McGee is a rattling rhyming ghost story of a poem, good for Halloween.
She could listen to Johnny Cash reciting it on YouTube.

WitcheryDivine · 30/09/2024 23:34

Also check out Hollie Mcnish on Instagram, she’s brilliant. Do get your girl to read poetry by women as well as men. I found it important as a teenager and still now. Hope she finds something she loves x

forcliffssake · 30/09/2024 23:34

How about The Arrow and The Somg by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Purplebunnie · 30/09/2024 23:32

Sorry repeated myself I meant the Road goes Ever on - Tolkien

I just can't think of any other poems at the moment, I used to know so many. Old age I'm afraid

SoMentallyDrained · 30/09/2024 23:26

OP thank you for starting this thread. I'd forgotten how much I love poetry and now can't wait to introduce my DCs to it!

Purplebunnie · 30/09/2024 23:24

I sit beside the fire and think - Tolkien - may be too short

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

Bilbo's Last Song - Tolkien

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!

Also I sit beside the fire and think - Tolkien
As far as I am concerned these are the only ones worth remembering, I don't get on with the rest of Tolkiens poetry

DD1 did Macavity and Jabberwocky there was also another child who did the poem about two raindrops racing down the window pane - sorry can't remember the name but it was good

There is also Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti